My apprenticeship with Lumi was far more daunting than I’d imagined. I finally understood why she and her coven kept the whole thing secret in the first place. Some of the steps required would’ve scared others off, but once I’d made my vow to follow in her footsteps, I couldn’t back out. There was no torture or anything particularly gruesome involved, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart, either.

The first five out of ten stages to becoming a full-fledged swamp witch had required physical exertion and mental strength, achieved through a combination of spell-casting and meditation. The sixth stage, however, was something else entirely.

“Are you ready?” Lumi had asked me two days ago, prior to submerging me inside a black capsule filled with a special kind of water.

I’d nodded and listened carefully to her instructions.

“No sound. No image. No physical weight,” she’d said. “Just you, weightless inside the void. Clear your mind of absolutely everything. Think about whatever you want until you have nothing left to think about. Only then, when your consciousness is devoid of any focus, will you be able to get in touch with the Word. Only then will the power touch you. Only then will you truly take your first step toward becoming a swamp witch.”

I’d gotten inside the pod, taking deep breaths as Lumi put the lid back on and locked me in there. I had the option of getting out, but that meant abandoning my apprenticeship completely.

“You’re either in it all the way, or you’re out,” Lumi had declared. “There are no half measures in the life of a swamp witch.”

Blackness swallowed me, as the capsule’s walls blocked all the light and sound. The liquid inside it kept me weightless. I breathed air, with the help of a discrete ventilation system incorporated into the pod. The water was warm, infused with a variety of herbs, flowers, and minerals meant to relax me and enhance my senses. There was no noise coming in. This kind of sensory deprivation was, at first, a tad scary, making me feel like I’d lost my physical form altogether.

But once I got comfortable, floating in what felt like an abyss, I relaxed.

My muscles loosened up. The tension left my spine and shoulders. And a flurry of thoughts swirled through my head. I lost track of time, as I processed every idea, every memory, and every single thought that came to me—from my early days in school, to my dreams of being in the human world and doing some righteous stuff with Lenny in New Orleans, to my recent desire to become a swamp witch and the opposition I’d encountered from Corrine.

I heard, saw, and felt nothing as I thought about everything, about why I was doing this and what my endgame was. The aim was to clear my head completely and reach a meditative state that would establish a primordial contact with the Word—the energy that could manipulate matter through spoken commands.

With the right combination of chants and ingredients, pretty much anyone could perform the majority of spells from the swamp witches’ triple tome. But a real swamp witch could do a lot more with much less, provided her soul was able to connect directly to the Word. That was my purpose inside the pod.

My mind wandered to the Hermessi, the elemental entities that fueled life on all planets and that gave fae their ability to manipulate water, fire, earth, and air. Harper was the first to hear about the legends—among us Shadians, anyway. After she came back from Neraka, Sherus and Nuriya confirmed that the fae, too, had long-lost legends about such powerful entities that fueled them, though they had no name for them.

Harper was also the first to see a Hermessi. It had taken the form of an Ekar bird, and it was a fire spirit. Their kind thrived on people’s belief in them. The more of us who knew and were certain that they existed, the stronger they became and the more power they could push into their conduits, of which only the fae were known.

The existence of such entities fascinated me. I’d spoken to Lenny about them, too, and I wholeheartedly believed in them, wishing that, one day, I’d make contact with one, just like Harper. They were clearly capable of incredible feats, and I longed to understand the true extent of their power.

Both Lenny and I had made plans to one day try to reach out to a Hermessi, though we weren’t sure how that could be done. One of the first things on our list had been to get copies of Nerakian lore and read up on everything they’d written about the Hermessi. Information was key, and the Imen had managed to salvage most of their pre-Shaytan texts.

But that felt like a distant dream now, after two days spent in the pod. I didn’t sleep—I didn’t feel the need. My body and mind were continuously fully rested, and that was one of the upsides of sensory deprivation. It relaxed the hell out of me.

Not long after my musings about the Hermessi, my heart started pounding. Hunter slipped into my consciousness, and I found myself wondering how I truly felt about him. I’d put great effort into pushing the notion of us away. It had taken some time, and I’d thought I’d gotten over him, until the party and the succubus incident.

Seeing him with her put me in a bad mood that didn’t go away for days.

We were best friends, and Hunter had not once hinted at us getting together. As far as I knew, he had no interest in me whatsoever. That had been the defining force behind my decision to get over him during my teenage years. It wasn’t going anywhere, and I was only going to get my heart broken if I pursued this.

But now, things were different.

I’d grown up, basically. And, upon seeing him with someone else, I experienced emotions I’d thought long gone. Worst of all, we’d both been reassigned to Calliope, part of the same crew as Lenny, and we had rooms next to each other in Luceria. I heard the giggles of his late-night visitors. The sounds clawed at my stomach.

The control I’d thought I had over all this was gone. Poof! Like a cloud of dust obliterated by the wind, my resolve had scattered away, and I was left feeling awkwardly nervous around Hunter, unable to look him in the eyes. The giggles coming from his room, those thin walls be damned, genuinely irked me.

My pulse started racing, as I realized I was having trouble getting past this thought. I’d resolved everything else in my mind, including my future conversations with Corrine and Mona regarding my path as a swamp witch. But Hunter… Hunter stayed. My breathing grew heavy as I battled a sudden and unexpected bout of claustrophobia.

I exhaled. I closed my eyes. It was pitch black either way, but I felt as though I had more of a grip over my state if I kept them shut.

“Forget about him,” I murmured. “He’s not into you. Forget about him. Get over it.”

Hours later, it was just as bad, if not worse. I was seconds away from seriously wanting to get out of there. A panic attack was lurking just around the corner. I could feel it creeping up on me.

I reached out and pushed the pod’s lid, wondering if I could sneak a quick breath of fresh air and some light, without anyone seeing me. Maybe I could cheat for a couple of seconds, enough to get me away from Hunter, who was practically stuck with me inside the pod, albeit not physically. But the lid didn’t budge.

Then all hell broke loose as my pulse lost control and my throat closed up.

My brain screamed at me, begging me to get out of there.

I pushed the lid again, but the end result was the same. I was stuck there.

I could hear my heartbeat echoing in my ears.

The water rippled around me. My face was above the surface.

Something pulled me under.

All of a sudden, I was being dragged through what felt like a never-ending ocean. I struggled to get back up, but nothing worked. Another minute, tops, and I’d drown. Panic hit me hard, knocking the air out of my lungs. Whatever force was keeping me under, it had no regard for what I was experiencing.

I fought hard to free myself, but I wound up taking in water.

The meat trembled on my bones, as the thought of drowning inside the damn pod crippled me. I couldn’t do anything. I tried to scream, but I only felt the air bubbles leaving my mouth. I was making it worse.

Then, I stilled.

I wasn’t drowning. I was breathing the water, somehow!

My eyes popped open. Darkness and nothing else. I inhaled and felt the water fill my lungs. I exhaled, then started over, making sure I had this right. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t normal—not that anything in my life was ever even close to that threshold.

My entire body hummed, as I relished the sensation of breathing water.

My mind was… vacant, at last.

Everything warped around me, as if I were being sucked into a void, like water through the shower drain. I swirled and got myself twisted around, surrounded by constant blackness. I let go of everything, wondering where it was taking me. I was convinced, at that point, that I wasn’t in the pod anymore, but I hadn’t left it, either.

A faint light flickered to my right. I turned my head just in time to see a spark buzz past me. Seconds later, another one caught my eye, somewhere to my left. I turned around, over and over, trying to catch the lights.

They looked like liquid fire, looping and twisting around, forming words across the emptiness—words I couldn’t understand.

Soon after I noticed the first light, I caught the rhythm. The strange words were appearing in a certain order, at specific times. Like a heartbeat. Badum. Badum. Some were short. Others were long. But they lit up in the same succession—it was a sequence. A message, maybe?

I floated around for what seemed like forever. I didn’t understand any of the words, but they resonated deep inside me. I couldn’t explain how or why, but, somewhere in the back of my head, I began to register and comprehend what was happening.

Thousands of words written in liquid light fluttered around me, in different lengths and sizes, but always following the same rhythm in a precise succession.

It hit me then.

This was the Word.

I’d made contact with the Word.

A swamp witch’s most precious asset, written nowhere in the material world. The power that could change thoughts and matter itself. It was glowing around me, trying to speak to me.